So the gravy train is closed. Hershey is no longer getting treats every time she piddles or poops outside. In fact, she only gets one when she comes back inside. Seemed like a good decision at the time, considering how she was tricking me into so many extra treats when she went out. We were going through a big jar of treats a week! And she ended up going out far more often than she needed to, hoping for a few more milk bones. (You know, because we never feed her.)
She’s a smart dog. It only took a day or two for her to stop jumping and leaping and sniffing my pocket for a treat after she went. She figured out pretty quickly that the good times were over.
Or are they? Because now, instead of immediately going when she gets outside and begging for that treat, she sniffs around to her heart’s content. We’re talking fifteen, twenty minutes to choose the perfect spot before she’ll go. And on the few occasions I’ve been frustrated or too busy to wander around the yard and just brought her back in after a few minutes, she peed on the floor. So, I guess the trick’s on me again. I’m taking her out for a long sniff, not a potty break. I never know if she has to go—or just wants to go out. I guess she figures if there’s nothing in it for her, she’ll take her sweet time. (And maybe that’s why she’s been trying to eat the bunny poop scattered around our yard. Yum! I get a treat after all!)
She even does this wandering-for-no-reason routine in the middle of the night. You haven’t known frustration until you’ve been awakened at 2:30 am for a potty break, and then again at 4:30—only to have the dog nose around the yard for twenty minutes and do nothing. And maybe she does that because every time I put her in her crate, she gets a smudge of peanut butter on one of her chew toys to keep her busy while I sneak out of the room.
And here’s a new discovery. When the sun comes up—Hershey wants to be up. Now that the sun’s rising earlier, she wants out of the crate way earlier than we want to be getting up. And you never can be certain if she’s barking because she has to go, or because she sees the room getting lighter and thinks, hey it’s a new day of scrounging around for food and chewing on things I shouldn’t! So you can’t ignore her. She might really have to go. I’ve tried closing all the curtains in the room and draping a blanket over her crate, but no luck. Slips of sunshine still poke through here and there prompting our pooch to yell out an early wake up call.
This puppy is ruling the roost. And I don’t know how to get control back.
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Have you missed any of the articles in this series?
If so, you can find them at:
The Bringing Up Puppy Series page.
Related posts:
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – What’s In a Name?
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – Second Thoughts
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – Hello Stranger
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – First Trip to the Vet
- Bringing Up Puppy Series – Loose
